Dung flies

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Nick
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I had my first dawn visit of the year to one of the local nature reserves a couple of days ago. There wasn't much about - it was rather cool and quite breezy. But there were some Yellow Dung Flies, one of my favourite invertebrate subjects, and very cooperative they were too.

I was hoping to capture some early morning natural light shots of dew-covered insects with the 70D while the insects were inactive, but that needs slow exposures and the breeze made that impractical, so I used flash with the FZ200 instead, with a Raynox 150 closeup lens.

There are 1100 pixel high versions of these in this album over at Flickr.


0712 007 2015_04_14 P1620113 LR 1100h
by gardenersassistant, on Flickr


0712 008 2015_04_14 P1620110 LR 1100h
by gardenersassistant, on Flickr


0712 011 2015_04_14 P1620137 LR 1100h
by gardenersassistant, on Flickr


0712 012 2015_04_14 P1620135 LR 1100h
by gardenersassistant, on Flickr


0712 016 2015_04_14 P1620134 LR 1100h
by gardenersassistant, on Flickr


0712 021 2015_04_14 P1620168 LR 1100h
by gardenersassistant, on Flickr


0712 023 2015_04_14 P1620163 LR 1100h
by gardenersassistant, on Flickr


0712 024 2015_04_14 P1620166 LR 1100h
by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
 
Nice to see you taking non experiment photos :D

#1 is the pick for me with all those perfect focus dew drops showing background and the fly detail.
 
First for me as well, looks great (they all look good) - look clean, well lit and look really fantastic on flickr in the higher res selections. Great work Nick
 
Very nice Nick with lovely light and tones
 
Great series Nick, my personal picks would be the slightly closer one, #'s 2 & 4 as these have a good balance between subject and background. I like the sparkly droplets anyway :)
 
Great set of images Nick, I like them all very much with #2, #5, #8, being my favs'.(y)

George.
 
Thanks for all the kind responses.

It's interesting to get a good response to #1, given that the subject is fairly small in the frame (and rather central in the frame too, but that's another matter :)). I see George liked the larger ones and Tim the not smallest ones, and I imagined that was the general feeling given the very strong responses I see to close-in shots with the subject filling the frame and/or showing lots of glorious detail on part of a subject. This is why I sometimes photograph closer in than comes naturally to me so as to have things to post that might be more to people's liking. It's nice to see that more "environmental" shots can appeal too.
 
Wonderful set Nick the first one is my favourite too the water drops on the end of the stems make the shot
I do prefer the ones with the lighter background the first 5 but that's just me
 
Great set of shots Nick - worth the early start, flash is very nicely controlled. #4 & #5 the best for me.
A very nice selection. I like the close ups more
Superb shots Nick.
Wonderful set Nick the first one is my favourite too the water drops on the end of the stems make the shot
I do prefer the ones with the lighter background the first 5 but that's just me

Thank you all. Two more votes from Chris and Peter for the closer-in ones I see. :)

Pete, it's not just you. I think you know my feeling about black backgrounds so you can imagine that I thought hard about including the last three. However, although the backgrounds are dark they aren't deep black. They do have a hint of colour in them, and I thought they seemed to set off the light coloured fly rather nicely, perhaps adding a bit to the sense of detail in the fur on the subject/background boundary. So I took a deep breath and included them anyway.

It's interesting how, as in this case, a very slight change in direction can radically alter the background and change the whole "feel" of an image. I find I'm working slower these days, particularly with botanical subjects, exploring background effects with changes in direction and aperture. And for some reason I'm more relaxed about dark backgrounds with flowers, occasionally even black backgrounds. Don't really know why that should be.
 
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